Part 12 (1/2)
”I didn't mean to. Tristan and I were fighting at school, and he was all vague and I can't tell you. I thought he was in trouble. So when the-they-the urchin men?-were pulling up the ladder to set sail, I just jumped on and hid below the deck. It was busy, too many people moving around. No one noticed me.”
”You thought my grandson was in danger, so you stowed away on a s.h.i.+p despite your own safety?”
She nods. I'm ready for him to laugh, to tell her she's a tiny human and squish her between his giant fingers.
He bends forward and down to her so that he can get a closer look at her face. Something pa.s.ses over his turquoise eyes-amus.e.m.e.nt. I recognize the way he goes from serious to smiles in seconds like my mom does. ”You are a most brave girl.”
Layla smiles at him, and the effect is the same that she has on anyone: it warms him. I can see it in his face. It looks like it's going to be all right, but someone in the crowd yells, ”Intruder!”
And that's followed by ”Land-dweller!”
”Skin-sack!”
”Trespa.s.ser!”
”Punish her!”
I turn around, but the taunts come from everywhere at once, so I can't point out the source. I shut my eyes against a sudden ache that goes away as quickly as it came. I can recognize the hunger in their gem-colored eyes. It's the same hunger as the silver mermaid in my dreams-empty, expecting.
The king taps his lips with a finger, thinking. ”My dear, do you know where you are?”
She hooks her thumbs on the loops of her shorts. ”Apparently, an island with mer-maids?”
”Merfolk, if you wish,” he says shortly. ”What you are seeing is not something we allow humans to walk away from. Not alive, anyway. It is how things have always been.”
”What about him?” I point at Marty.
”He is not exactly-human-as she is,” my grandfather says.
Not human? He looks human enough. Marty shrugs, standing there with his cardboard box.
”I would offer you a chance to stay and live with us, as you don't seem much of a threat. However, I do not think that is an option for you.”
She shakes her head slowly, panicked eyes searching my face. I'd like to try to explain to Mr. Santos-Sorry, sir, but I had to leave Layla on a mystical island with my other half of the family because she just doesn't listen. Please don't take out that machete you have from your time in the Ecuadorian army.
”Very well.” He nods, and I get ready for him to trace his finger across his neck and a guard to take her away. Instead he says, ”You will have to make an offering. As you were all late, you will be the last ones to offer your t.i.thes.”
I breathe a little easier. We sit to the right of the throne on a row of boulders and watch as one by one, everyone who was on the s.h.i.+p with us steps up to my grandfather's throne, bows, and presents a gift on a giant sh.e.l.l held on either side by boys who look like miniature versions of the gladiator guards, tattoos and all. The offerings are anything from jewelry trinkets to crayons to Pillow Pets to hammers to what look like pieces of bicycles.
I lean closer to Kurt, ”What happens to all that stuff?”
”It gets distributed among everyone.”
The turtle boy reaches up to the sh.e.l.l and drops in a toy, probably his favorite one by the pout on his face and the way he pulls away when his mom tries to put her arm around him.
It's our turn.
Marty, the human-looking non-human, hands the cardboard box to the king directly.
”Representing the Thorne Hill Betwixt Alliance, I, Marty McKay, present your Sea Lordiness with a gift.”
One of the guards moves as though to take the box, but the curiosity on my grandfather's face radiates. He holds up his palm, and the guard returns to his post.
”May I?” Marty pulls off the red-and-white MTA tape and reaches inside the box. He pulls out a long, rectangular gla.s.s box. Inside is a cl.u.s.ter of neon flowers that glow in whites and pinks and purples, their stems twisting on themselves, alive.
”Orchids. They grow in salt water, best in the shade,” Marty says.
The king's laughter is booming, wondrous. ”This is most acceptable.” A girl, a slightly bluer version of Thalia, walks up and carries the flowers away. Marty bows and steps to the side, which leaves just me and Layla.
I do as my mother said and unzip the backpack. I empty out the front pocket onto the sh.e.l.l tray. It's all computer parts and mismatched pieces of earrings and bracelets that my mom keeps in one of her treasure trunks. I unzip the small front pocket and pull out a captain's eyepiece. It's made of a bronzed heavy metal. I pull it to its full length and hand it to my grandfather.
He holds it to his eye on the wrong end, and I hold back a laugh, because I don't want to be the one to tell the old man that he's holding the gla.s.s by the wrong end. But he corrects it himself and jumps a bit when he holds it right at my face. He laughs, a rumble like thunder, and claps his thigh. ”Tell my daughter she still knows me well.”
Sure. Good. Glad you like it. I wonder what kind of grandfather he would have been if he were in my life. Would he have broken the fifty-year rule and come to see me sooner? Would he have dressed up for Christmas and been a wet Santa with treasures from the bottom of the sea? Would he have taught me whatever mermen teach each other? I absently run my hand along my smooth chin. He wouldn't have to teach me how to shave. But maybe how to catch a mermaid?
”And now,” he says as he looks down at Layla. ”For you.”
The whispering and giggling starts again. How am I supposed to be their king when they clearly don't even like humans?
Layla digs into her pockets. She's got on these shorts that show off her golden, powerful legs. She pulls out a pack of gum. She pulls off a sliver and puts it in her mouth. She chews and chews and nothing is happening, so the laughter continues.
She blows a bubble between her lips until it gets as big as a basketball, and then it pops. Some of the court mermaids jump at the echo of the pop; they touch their coiled hair and fix their pearls as though they're appalled that she would dare frighten them so. Behind us the mermaids watching the spectacle from the fringes of the lake smile with approval, and part of my nervousness washes away.
Layla hands the pack to my grandfather, who takes it almost greedily. He does as she did, and soon all the wrappers are scattered around his feet. I think about when Layla and I had contests to see who could fit the most gum into our mouths, and our jaws would hurt from chewing so much. She smiles with her mouth full of gum now, the same way she did then.
My grandfather chews and chews. ”Masticating food that never ends. Wonderful. It reminds me of eating various fruits all at once.”
Marty leans into my ear and whispers, ”I haven't the heart to tell him that there are zero fruit servings in that pack of gum.”
When the king frowns, my heart sinks. ”The flavor is all gone.”
The mer-court jeers. My grandfather, the Sea King, swallows his gum and sits back, pleased with himself.
It's strange, almost painfully funny, how I have never known him, and suddenly, unexplainably, out of thin air, I love him. I see my mother in him, and I wonder if I'm in there too.
He bows his head to Layla, the lines around his eyes spread with a smile. ”I accept your gift. And you are welcome as a guest of Tristan Hart.”
She bows her head to him and links her fingers with mine. Everything about her is buzzing, and that makes me drunk and happy and dizzy. Since we're both alive, I guess this means she loves me.
An orchestra plays cellos and violins that look like they were made from the mast of a s.h.i.+p and strung with gold, and trumpets and horns made out of endlessly coiled sh.e.l.ls.
My eyes are everywhere at once-the girls jumping off rocks, the women holding merbabies, the princesses mingling in their private but open tents. I try to picture my mother sitting by the throne under one of those canopies with her hair done up in sh.e.l.ls and pearls, watching as purple girls play the harp for her. I can't see her there trying to be a good and proper princess. I know she'd be in the middle of the lake, dancing, mingling, being the life of the party.
We pick food off opulent trays pa.s.sed around by more pretty pink girls who might actually be boys. It's hard to tell. Layla elbows me because I'm not eating enough. She says it's rude to not eat everything they give you. Like the time her dad made some Ecuadorian delicacy, which was really just guinea pig, which, no matter how you cut it up and put it on the grill, is just a big fat rat. But I ate it then, just like I'm eating whatever this delightfully green chewy stuff is now. For Layla.
Marty sucks on the inside of a clam, which makes Layla wrinkle her nose.
”Unlike other fey,” he says, ”merpeople are the only ones whose food you can eat. Land fairies can keep you in their courts if you so much as lick honey from their spoons-or various other parts-”
Layla snorts, taking a sip from a fizzy pink liquid. Her eyes squint when she smiles so hard. I never noticed how long her eyelashes are, how black against the smooth honey of her eyes.